I will side with Chuck here. I have been under there and know how hard the grounds are to get to. The average person does not wire things back like they should be, and moving the location changes things from factory. Nothing upsets me more than looking through schematics and finding someone changed them on their own..

Take them off and clean them. Then put them back where you found them. If you are an electrician and feel comfortable with your wiring abilities, move them. Everyone has a crescent and sandpaper. Not everyone has the proper autocrimpers and terminals...

To each their own, but it does read like "unless you have touched this part, you don't know"... I would have suggested the same remedy, even if I had not been into the wiring..

Oh, and the OP should try to start it in neutral. Jiggle the shifter all around..

 

I thought this particular thread needed a good dose of humor and I saw that smiley and lmao. Hope you got a good laugh too.

 

Yeah, I did. Fish used as weapons is never not funny. Plus, it came out of his head!

 

Upchuck, let me apologize for being a rather blunt outspoken redneck in a rover.

Yes you did offer a simple fix for improving high resistance ground connections that would work well in lots of applications. And I realize you also have valuable experience with some high tech military aircraft. And it is more current than any similar experience I gained on those aircraft carriers. You were trying to be helpful. Please continue those efforts.

I just came off a little strong because my initial impression was that your advice was lame and could not possibly correct the severely corroded starter ground connection that I had encountered on my early 97 Discovery when I had the intermittent starter failure syndrome that the OP was describing. Especially since your second comment stated you did not know where it was located. I had to reterminate mine because of the advanced degradation of the hardware. I hope the pictures I posted showing the new ground termination was helpful to someone.

I am just glad I redid the ground and fixed the problem without removing a good starter and replacing it. I still have my spare starter on the shelf.

Once again I apologize for my brash comments. It was not intended as a personal attack on you. I will just have to work harder to overcome my redneck tendencies to over react.

I agree when working on Military Aircraft and such, you have to maintain configuration control and not relocate things at will.

I disagree that I need to maintain configuration control on MY Discovery. And you don't need an auto crimper. Just a decent pair of wire cutters with a crimping jaw or one of the combination wire stripper/crimpers. I saw some nice ones at Lowes yesterday for around 20 bucks. Mine are Thomas and Betts from the mid 70's when I was a maintenance electrician. You don't have to be a genius to crimp on a new wire terminal.

 

Danny you are right. I had an old Chevelle that was having problems with the electrical and I cleaned the ground and 6 moinths later I had the same problems. I decided why not move the ground to another location on the frame and it worked like a champ. You don't need a schematic to follow a wire and comparing aircraft to cars is apples to oranges. Two totally seperate animals.

 

Hey Danny it's no big deal. I'm sure if we were having that conversation in person, it would have lasted about 15 seconds. Everybody's got their different troubleshooting techniques, and something that fixes my truck may not fix a similar issue on another guy's truck. Most of my techniques come from practicing on airplanes, which don't drive around on wet and salty roads all winter. So the last guy was right, sometimes comparing trucks and planes doesn't get you anywhere. There are a lot of things that you just can't get away with on planes that you can do on cars all day long, like moving grounds on demand. I forget that sometimes. I review and approve electrical schematics at work, and debates can go on for weeks as to whether a particular ground wire should be 6" or 16". So that's the kind of electrical crap I'm used to.
But hey, I appreciate the apology. Cheers man.

 

You are welcome UpChuck. After being audited on the Cruise Missile Program when I was a Manufacturing Engineer, and having to defend a mistake that one of my subordinates made over the color of a ground wire marker, I decided to become a Certified Quality Auditor, since it was easier to ask the difficult questions than to try and answer them sometimes. When you live in that tight a working environment day in and day outyear after year, it clouds your mind and imposes restrictions on some of the simpler solutions.

Anyway, please continue your contributions to the forum. When you eventually do run into an issue and manage to resolve it, please pass that on to everyone, That's how we all learn, from our own experiences as well as those of others....

I miss the gold old days of working with those special aircraft, missiles, and other high tech stuff. Now I just tinker with my Discovery and whatever else I run into around the house and my golf game.

Did you hear the line about arguing with a Inspector/Auditor is like wrestling with a Pig in Mud, after a few hours, you realize the Pig is Enjoying Himself.

Have fun, just don't flip your Rover Over.

 

These days my airplanes have lighted cup holders and iPod adapters. What happened?